Meet Sergio A. Giralt, MD

Sergio A. Giralt, MD, is Chief of the Adult Bone Marrow
Transplant Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.He is a board-certified
hematologist/oncologist whose clinical practice and research focus on stem cell
transplantation for patients with blood disorders. Dr. Giralt and his
colleagues pioneered the use of reduced-intensity conditioning regimens for
older or more debilitated patients with blood cancers, and are currently using
and studying T cell depletion techniques to dramatically reduce the risk of
graft-versus-host disease, a serious complication of donor stem cell
transplantation.

Dr. Giralt is also an expert in the treatment of multiple
myeloma, a blood cancer that affects plasma cells. His research in this area is
focused on developing new conditioning regimens for autologous transplant, a
treatment approach in which patients receive an infusion of their own stem
cells or bone marrow following a course of high-dose chemotherapy, as well as
developing strategies that will reduce "symptom burden" and make the
treatment so tolerable that it can be done on an outpatient basis. He led the
Myeloma Intergroup Committee of the Blood and Marrow Clinical Trials Network,
which developed the current national study looking at the role of consolidation
therapy after autologous stem cell transplant for patients with myeloma.

Most recently, Dr. Giralt was Deputy Chair of the
Department of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies at the
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. He joined Memorial
Sloan-Kettering in May 2010 as Chief of the Adult Bone Marrow Transplant
Service. He is also the past chair of the steering committee of the Blood and
Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network, a federally funded group that
defines the research agenda for stem cell transplantation in the United States.